Great idea from LF: "While the Linux server market is predicted to reach $50 billion dollars in three years, and the embedded and mobile Linux markets continue to explode, the picture is less rosy in other corners of the IT market. Developers are being laid off, and many are looking to careers in the Linux and open source sector."

The OLPC project brought several dozen machines to the conference to be handed out, at random, to attendees who would promise to either do something amazing with them or give them to somebody else who would.

]]>https://gotoxo.wordpress.com/2008/01/31/links-for-2008-01-31/feed/0daveshieldsOLPC Donations at Linux.conf.au 2008https://gotoxo.wordpress.com/2008/01/30/olpc-donations-at-linuxconfau-2008/
https://gotoxo.wordpress.com/2008/01/30/olpc-donations-at-linuxconfau-2008/#respondWed, 30 Jan 2008 13:26:33 +0000http://gotoxo.wordpress.com/?p=175]]>Lwn.net recently had a short story, A moment from LCA2008, about the donation by the OLPC of several dozen XO-laptops to participants in Linux.conf.au, an annual Linux conference in Australia. The story is quite short. The nicest part is a wonderful picture of a stakk of XO’s about to be distributed to very experienced Linux programmers. As the story says:

The OLPC project brought several dozen machines to the conference to be handed out, at random, to attendees who would promise to either do something amazing with them or give them to somebody else who would. It was, as Rusty Russell put it, rather like being given a puppy. There are, however, fewer cleanup problems to deal with.

Congratulations to the OLPC on such a thoughtful and intelligent move. I agree getting XO’s into the hands of experienced programmers is very important; see rsyncing the planet.

By the way, before I sent my XO off to Tridge he said he already had access to one, but that he knew a good home for another one, so I sent the one I bought for him on its way to Australia.

“With BigBoard software running on an Ubuntu server, support requests no longer fall through the cracks, and the Desktop Computer Services group consistently ranks among the highest faculty-rated IT support departments on campus.”

“Over the past year we’ve developed our file infrastructure, replication, backup, caching, and S3-backed storage to the point where we don’t feel like we need to artificially limit what you folks are able to upload just to keep up with growth. We’re

Says Chief Executive Samuel J. Palmisano: “The big issues for us are: Where do you put them? How do you retain them? How do you develop them? How do you move work to them or them to work?” Says Dave, big challenge for U.S. is how to educate our own stude

This plan, based on low-cost XP, assumes developing countries can afford the hardware needed to run XP. Even that can be a problem. Ii the hardware has a significant street value then how do you keep it safely inside the school?

This could also be done using the XO laptop to monitor the stethoscope, making this one of the many ways in which the XO could be used to provide new ways to collect and assess data in the developing world.

Insightful post on the distinction between submitting code under an open-source license and copyright assignment. For example, the Free Software Foundation requires a copyright assignment for contributions to their code base